Steve Taylor Comments On His Ministry

Steve Taylor, teetering on the brink of 31, first happened in 1957 in the
Imperial Valley's Brawley, California, 50 miles north of Mexico. "It was a
real hot region," Steve summarizes. "But it grows a lot of food and has
cockroaches the size of cats."

Opening his talk, Steve often puts his dad--a Baptist minister--into his
monologue. A brother came along precisely one year and 11 minutes after
Steve's birth. THen the Taylor family moved to Spring Valley, a San Diego
suburb, with a new church for dad, and the family grew. "We never had a
lot, but we never went without." It's a passing comment and the subject
returns more directly to his dad.

"Apparently I look a lot like my dad." He often fortifies this statement
with an anecdote. Steve had been away from Brawley 15 years when he returned
for a concert with the Continental Singers. Six people recognized him as
Rev. Taylor's son.

"My dad came from a real conservative background as a Plymouth Brethren,
the son of missionaries--first to American Indians in Albuquerque, and then
on to Colombia. But after five years in Central America, an insect bite
claimed Grandpa Taylor's life and Grandma was left to raise the six kids
single-handedly." Steve still stresses the awe he feels for his father.

"It is amazing to me that dad was able to remain free of legalism. We
never felt dad was nuts-o or off-the-wall."

Steve praises his dad for being loving, consistent in his beliefs and
effective as a preacher. "He would preach without notes. I don't know how
he did it."

Just like his dad, Steve speaks up, all he can, for Christianity. There
is a mission for him behind the music and satire.

"I want to get Christians thinking about such issues as a Christian point
of view and Christian standards. In concerts, I want people to be
challenged as to who the real Jesus was. Does Christianity merely make you
happy or is there more to it?"

Steve has strong feelings on the cultural perceptions of Christianity in
its evangelical form. "I think most pople get their image of Christianity
from media, especially TV preachers," he says, "who preach doctrines like
God is an American or Canadian and He wants us all to be rich and
conservative. I think people characterize fundamentalists as right wing and
conservative and tied into a whole national agenda, and I'm definitely not
coming from that point of view."

Steve's albums reflect that last point. He shadows his religious
references in sophisticated wit which avoids being bogged down in its
cleverness.

"I get no thrill out of writing songs that don't say anything. I count
first of all on my songs to make the statement I want to make. When I do a
concert, I don't have to do a lot of talking because the songs will speak
for themselves."

Heavily influenced by iconoclasts like The Clash and Elvis Costello,
Steve's lyrical observations are at once satirical and profound, and he
doesn't hesitate to slip prosaic knives into the putative sacred cows of
modern evangelism. From his "I Manipulate:" "Does your soul crave
center stage / Have you heard about the latest rage / Read your Bible by
lightning flash / Get ordained by the thunder crash / Build a kingdom with a
cattle prod / Tell the masses it's a message from God / Where the innocent
congregate / I manipulate."

Steve feels there is a difference between ministry and entertainment, not
so much now that you can't have both, but essentially that you should choose
one or the other. The tool that he has chosen is music, so he wants to make
his performances as good musically as possible and as entertaining as
possible.

Along with how the Bible-thumping righteousness of TV evangelists is
perceived by the public, Steve sees much of the content of contemporary
Christian rock as being its own worst enemy.

"Both (the public and the media) have been led into the same dead end in
that they tend to chracterize all Christian rock by a few bland Christian
groups," he says, adding that as the genre matures, more artists are
breaking away from the repetitive dogmatism that has marked much of the
music.

He adds, "Christian rock is the only style of music that is rejected
because of lyrical content. Some people toss it out for a lot of good
reasons. Some of it is lousy, but there's a lot of it that's good,
too."

Rather than strictly preaching the Gospel, Steve feels that Christian
rock artists should address themselves more to issues viewed from a
Christian vantage point a la U2 and Bruce Cockburn, who he says "is
articulating a lot of the concerns that Christians should have."

Summing it all up, Steve concludes, "There is a lot of talk about the
call we have as Christian musicians. I think we basically have the same
call: to communicate the Gospel."

"Therefore, what I'm doing is no more profound than someone at work
everyday in an office who communicates through what they do."

Editor's Note: Steve has spent much of this spring and
early summer getting "Babylon, 1990" ready for fall release. Start looking
forward to it.